It is known that transporting vehicles are used in the manufacture and also in the preparation of metal coils, for example, in order to transport the metal strip that has been wound up into a truss, also known as a coil, away from winding and towards various preparation stations. In the individual preparation stations, the metal coils are further prepared, for example bound, marked, weighed and inspected, before they come to a storage or loading station. A hot coil coming off a rolling mill normally has a temperature of up to 850° C. and a weight of up to 45 t. For this, various conveyors are used, such as rail vehicles, so-called coil-transporting carriages, short transporting carriages, chain and lifting beam conveyors, all of which are often very complex to construct and also to operate.
In mills, transporting carriages normally move along a track, which is anchored to the foundations of the factory. The rail system may consist essentially of straight-running track sections. At crossing points, a turntable makes changes of direction of travel possible with regards to the approach of track sections facing other directions.
In modern hot coil lines, short coil intervals are increasingly becoming a problem, as the station times are getting shorter and shorter. Known conveyors can hardly achieve a coil removal rate of less than a minute and are furthermore not very flexible. There is therefore a need for a transporting system that has a better availability and greater flexibility.
Moreover, in known transporting systems, damage often occurs to the coils because of the short station times for picking up and dropping off the metal coils due to the demands of lifting. The manufacturing quality of the metal strip is thereby adversely affected.